02/05/2024 - The two representatives of the Roman outfit talked to us about their arthouse distribution work, as well as their commercial and marketing strategies

We met in Rome with Stefano Finesi and Gianluca Buttari, partners at distribution company Teodora Film. During our conversation, we focused in particular on the editorial policy of the outfit, its target market and audience, and on recent marketing campaigns.

Cineuropa: First, could you tell us about the editorial policy of Teodora Film?
Stefano Finesi: Teodora Film was founded by Vieri Razzini and Cesare Petrillo in 2000. The editorial policy has remained fundamentally the same: to distribute great, quality cinema and pay particular attention to the work of female directors and to LGBT themes. Teodora has always been cutting-edge, doing pioneer work even when there was much less attention paid to these themes. It brought to Italy for the first time the work of filmmakers such as Céline Sciamma, Mia Hansen-Løve, Susanne Bier, Teona Strugar Mitevska, Lucrecia Martel, Ursula Meier… I’m also thinking about films such as Pride [+see also:
film review
trailer
making of
film profile], BPM (Beats Per Minute) [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Arnaud Valois
interview: Robin Campillo
film profile], Girl [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Lukas Dhont
film profile], Tomboy [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Céline Sciamma
film profile], Stranger by the Lake [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Alain Guiraudie
film profile]… They’re all reference titles for the LGBT community, on which Teodora worked when those themes were less evident. Now, luckily, the situation is much better. For the rest, we’re always looking to balance out the presence of great, renowned masters – being a company with a strong cinephile vocation – with the discovery of new directors and first features.

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How many of you work at Teodora? How many titles do you manage each year?
SF: We are three partners; myself, Gianluca Buttari and Daniela Graziano. Also working with us are Michele Zanlari, who takes care of commercial direction, and Beatrice Gulino, who handles acquisitions and sales. We take care of most of the marketing and printing work in house. We are looking to maintain this “artisanal” dimension by distributing a few films, eight or nine a year, dedicating special attention to each title. For this part of the season, we’re had Last Summer [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Catherine Breillat
film profile] by Catherine Breillat, released in March, while in May we will have the Swedish documentary Fantastic Machine [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Axel Danielson, Maximilien …
film profile], produced by Ruben Östlund, and in the Italian edition, narrated by Elio Germano. On the list, there will then be the directing debut of Flemish actress Veerle Baetens titled When It Melts [+see also:
film review
interview: Veerle Baetens
film profile], as well as the new film by Xavier Legrand, The Successor [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Xavier Legrand
film profile]. For next season, we can already announce La cocina by Alonso Ruizpalacios and From Hilde, with Love [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Andreas Dresen
film profile] by Andreas Dresen.

What are your main reference markets?
SF: Primarily Cannes and Berlin, but we are also present in Venice. From Venice, together with our friends at Tucker Film, we distributed the winner of the Silver Lion and the Grand Jury Prize, Evil Does Not Exist, by Ryûsuke Hamaguchi. Teodora Film has also been lucky to distribute the last two Palme d’Or winners in Italy, which achieved resounding and unexpected success, despite not being a very easy time for arthouse distribution in general.

Have the pandemic and the transformation of the sector in the last few years changed your business model?
SF: More than the business model, the pandemic has changed the public. For our part, compared to previously, we tend to invest less externally, building our campaigns with in-house materials and ideas. Even before the pandemic, the arthouse titles that managed to make big numbers at the box office were a minority, but the situation is even more polarised today. There’s a small group of films that continues to have optimal results, as in our case Anatomy of a Fall [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Justine Triet
film profile]. Others, however, no longer able to count on an audience base with a cinema-going habit, if they go badly, they go very badly. We do what we can with work outside the cinema, but the theatrical component remains essential.

How would you describe your public?
SF: There once was the hard core of the over 50-60. Today this demographic has thinned out and the challenge is to regain a public of young people – meaning viewers between 25 and 40 years old. With the work of directors such as Ruben Östlund, for example, it’s easy to grab their attention; with others, it is obviously more difficult.

You’ve also distributed, together with MUBI, Pedro Almodóvar’s short film, Strange Way of Life…
SF: In fact we were the first company in Italy to handle a film together with MUBI, Petite Maman [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]. [...] We continued collaborating from that moment onwards. This year, we released together with MUBI the short film by Almodóvar and the feature film How to Have Sex [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Molly Manning Walker
film profile], winner in Un Certain Regard at the latest Cannes Film Festival. It’s been an interesting collaboration. The work required balancing the demands of the sellers, who want a large enough exclusive window for the theatrical release before moving on to the platform. With Almodóvar, it was more an operation of the heart, due to our attention to the author and to LGBT issues. The film did well, but it was nevertheless hard to manage. It was an experiment, one of many to find new ways. However, it was worth it.

What have been the most interesting marketing campaigns on which you’ve worked?
Gianluca Buttari: An interesting example might be our work on Anatomy of a Fall. To promote it, we purchased a lot of advertising space at the beginning of the major national true crime podcasts, a method we had never used before. It brought amazing results. The film was born as a thriller and was therefore very much on target. We often have important numbers in that sense. It’s not a measurable impact, but we are convinced, without a doubt, that it helped the promotion of the film.

We presented Anatomy of a Fall and Triangle of Sadness [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ruben Östlund
interview: Ruben Östlund
film profile] at the Festa del Cinema in Rome in special screenings. We had decorated the room that screened Östlund’s film with life jackets on theme from the movie, which were literally snapped up, and the director himself held a happening involving the audience present. On every seat, we had placed travel bags for vomit, the ones you can find on boats, personalised with graphics from the film. In addition, we had customised the red carpet in both cases. For instance, for the one for Justine Triet’s film, we had placed some crime scene silhouettes. Everything was shared a lot on social media, giving visibility to the films and the events.

(Translated from Italian)